it's all just a game

During the bombing of Iraq back in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm a flight of B-52Gs launching from and returning to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, struck targets inside Iraq. This was at the time the longest distance combat mission in history: 35 hours and 14,000 statute miles round trip, the pilots were practically home on time for their dinner with their family.

A record at the time it was nonetheless impressive, but today the round trip of killing people at the other side of the world has changed dramatically since now the pilots of these unmanned MQ-1 Predator drones literally mean the pilot doesn't have to leave home, as this PBS video details the pilots of them at their base in Nevada as they kill Taliban fighters in Pakistan.



What first came to my mind was its similarities to a video game, playing online shooters was always a great satisfaction (especially against strangers) because every time you shoot a person you know that some else will see the words 'You're Dead' across their screen, you haven't really killed anyone but it's still pretty fun and well worth it to know you pissed someone off that you'll probably never meet.

George Gittoes documentary Soundtrack To War details the PlayStation generation soldiers in Iraq and how different they thought the war was going to be for them.

This doesn't really run through with the Predator drone pilot since not only are they killing from medium altitudes but also from thousands of miles away, it's not at all the same psychologically.



Although Predator controllers do have to solve problems to succeed in the mission they don't risk their lives and in the end just have to finish the game before them regardless of how many civilians they kill in the meantime or the sovereignty of Pakistan.

cringe worthy electronic crap

Remember back in 2007 the big sales hype around the Nintendo Wii and how it pretty much revolutionized gaming with its motion control, well apparently the Chinese tried to neither compete with the Wii, or copy it or try and fool the Chinese people in general to think their getting the same thing, only instead of it being called the Wii and be made by Nintendo it was called the Vii and made by Chintendo.



I'm not kidding isn't that the most cringe worthy piece of hardware you have ever seen?

I could go on about the shitty games it plays but I'd rather not.

I mean when you see lines and lines of Chinese workers working in sweat shops making Big Macs and stuff like that you assume that at least they're making good quality hardware (even if the majority of it gets shipped abroad) even though they're not getting paid 100th enough!

But what annoys me are bullshit cheap electronically crap that people really don't mean, like the POP Station, guess what that rips off;



Yes the PSP, not my favorite handheld console by a long shot, in fact I dislike many handheld consoles cause anyone who carries around a PSP along with some UMD's is a dipshit, but alas anyone who in their right mind who would buy the POP Station is obviously freaking bonkers.

Limited to a single game on an LCD, might as well buy seven of them if you want some variety.

I could go on listing more cringe worthy electronic rip offs but if you can't spot them from a mile off you're probably not able to read this!

the mother of all combat games

The above is a screen shot of Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising, to me this game is going to be one of the best games of all time full stop, Operation Flashpoint (the first one Cold War Crisis) was a very good game, way ahead of its time, and the one great thing that makes it stand out even today eight years on as a potentially brilliant game was its realism.



When you get shot you die, you don't die after walking into the line of machine gun fire and taking 50 bullets to the stomach before even falling like in Call of Duty, no you die like you would in real life.

Also you don't carry an excess of weaponry, you carry the same amount that a real person would be able to carry comfortably unlike; the excess amount of ammunition you could carry in any other combat shooting game.

Operation Flashpoint Resistance (an add on to Cold War Crisis) you lead a small resistance group against a large Soviet army, this one is twice as a realistic and twice as hard, completing the game is actually a difficult task and requires a lot of patience.

For instance having to wait to ambush a convoy, but wait ten minutes in real time, just standing there!



Flashpoint features dozens of realistic guns, vehicles and aircraft combat, it provided vehicle realism very close to dedicated flight and tank sims, and it combined all of these elements and accurately simulated the complex relationships between these elements in war.

Now that was 2001, imagine with graphics better then Battlefield 2 and with a faster game engine, along with the realism of Cold War Crisis, yes Flashpoint is coming back, and hopefully with a vengeance.

the PlayStation Generation

Back in 1991 during the buildup to Operation Desert Storm against Iraq there were several video games released relating to the event (the one below F-19).



Saying that video games and war have a close relationship is a pretty obvious statement and if your not instantly familiar with games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Arma Assault then you obviously don't play games (at all).

But what's interesting is when you send your Grand Theft Auto or ace shooter at BF-2 into a real war, Evan Wright a journalist calls these guys the PlayStation Generation.

He even penned a book Generation Kill about them and his experiences when he was embedded with them (the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the USMC) during Operation Iraqi Freedom in mid 2003, he describes how in Iraq they "killed very well" unlike US personnel in other wars where they lost their innocence first.

This theory is backed up by the George Gittoes movie Soundtrack to War in which soldiers listen to heavy metal music and rock and roll songs during the heat of combat (again in Iraq in 2003), one of them even mentioning listening to 2Pac driving over the border when the shock and awe invasion begun.



Other soldiers describe how its not really like a video game one guy exclaiming how "you see in the movies, bang your dead you fall down, here its bang, you should be dead, your guts are hanging out, but your walking and talking swinging in a swing set swingin'like your half crazy. They just don't die!"

After watching that documentary a few times I have no idea what he was exactly talking about, but the truth is video games still have a bit to go before they authentically simulate realism in combat.



But not much further...

'Hour of Heroes' revolutionary or awkward?

So I downloaded the Brothers in Arms Hour of Heroes game from the iTunes Store the other day for €4.99 and started to play it to see if I had gotten my money worth.

I watched the intro video doubting that the final product would have that good graphics (it did), very good graphics for a file that's only 85MB, but the controls on a touch screen were rather difficult to get used to and I have yet to get used to it as I near the end of the game.

All in all its worth every cent of the cost and I wouldn't call it brilliant but its definitely something new, the iPod Touch proves it can play games that are up to a PSP standard, not very well that is.



But still its worth the €5 unlike every other shitty JAVA mobile phone game!

Far Cry the movie?

If you're a PC gamer you've probably played Far Cry at some stage then you know that in Far Cry you play Jack Carver a simple boat guy with a Hawaiian shirt and massive balls and you pretty much just killed mercenaires and monsters across a massive beautiful tropical island, if you're a PC gamer and never heard of Far Cry shut up and go back and play Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

Anyway Uwe Boll the guy who is going to make this had the rights to the game before it was made, this raises the question whether or not the film will actually be any good or if it'll be complete bullshit, judge for yourself by watching the trailer but to me the monsters in it look like bald men who run around alot and can take a lot of bullets before going down.

Maybe its just me but I remember a time when Far Cry only consisted of the one story and the one game and was only released for the PC, and there wasn't a load of spinoffs messing up the stories, and there wasn't going to be a movie based on it!

Of all things Call of Duty 4 surprised me!

The video above shows the mission Shock and Awe in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I was quite impressed because it actually just totally fucked up everything and killed one of the major characters!

Scientific Proof of Evolution

I was sitting around playing GTA San Andreas the other day and I was thinking of Charles Darwins theory of evolution, (that we were fish, squirrels, monkey's humans etc.) and I found the proof of evolution within video games, taking the four generations of Grand Theft Auto you get something like this.





And finally the last step between monkey and human.



GTA IV is going to be awesome!

Guitar Hero?

For those lucky ones who never heard of it Guitar hero is a series of games designed for people whom want to be rock stars but have no musical talent (whatsoever). The game takes the simply design of a different kind of control (like Buzz does) shaped like a guitar and then you play one or two player in front of a massive video crowd, that go wild if you do good and boo you if you suck.

Okay it sounds good once you get used to the concept but my God there has to be nothing worse then a snobby Guitar Hero fan, you know you ask them if they play Guitar Hero and they put on a stupid smile stating they are "professionals" at it, so who the hell cares if you are good at Guitar Hero?

I mean everyone whom loves Guitar Hero is itching to get a million points, but for what to see a screen that says a million points, you've spent weeks preparing for it and when you eventually get there you really are a hero, no seriously think about, you bought the game, spent days, weeks monthes training getting used to where the buttons and not getting tired eventually scored a million points making the video crowd on the screen go wild, you've made it you're a rock star.

GTA and the French

The Game
With GTA IV the start of the next generation of GTA games just around the corner set in 2002 I was reminded of back in 2002 of Vice City and how cool it was, set in 1986 in Miami Vice style I can't help but remember the Cortez missions, killing a French courier and vending off lines of French gangsters whilst escaping onboard his yacht with the sun literally shining in your eyes.

The Time (2002)
2002, months after 9/11 how we from Europe saw how everybody in the US were eager to get into Iraq to get their revenge, (how times have changed), after trying to gain support from Europe France was one of the countries to refuse, Bush got annoyed and what followed was hundreds of protests from some US citizens (pouring wine down sewers for example.)

GTA Controversy
Apart from being tagged a cop killing game like GTA 3 and San Andreas there was no other controversy issues for the game, unlike GTA 3, the US government attacked the producers planning to ban the game since the city is like New York and there is a small plane in the air port and if you fly it into a high building you will die, godammit is there no justice anymore.